Drawing on a larger ethnographic study of four high school young men, this paper foregrounds high school male-male friendships as a context for examining how heterosexism and homophobia operate to limit and delimit the ways masculinities are constructed. I begin this article by first highlighting an inconsistency between recent school initiatives…

The sociological literature on teaching and learning includes a number of discussions devoted to the importance of multicultural education. Much of this literature encourages educators to revise the curriculum and shows how the experience of multicultural education can stimulate student's sociological imaginations. To this end, some scholars have…

Low levels of physical activity among adolescent girls are a cause for concern. Examining girls' physical activity perceptions and motivations through in-depth qualitative research allows for greater understanding of the reasons behind their physical activity-related choices. Forty-seven girls aged 14 to 16 years participated in exploratory focus…

One route to uncovering schooling's goals for an improved citizenry is to track certain subjects of the compulsory curriculum. In this case, health is investigated, and especially its messages on smoking and drinking. First introduced as scientific temperance instruction (in the 1880s), renamed hygiene (from about 1910), then as health (from the…

Teachers' institutes for public elementary school teachers in Ontario began to be implemented in the middle of the nineteenth century as a result of the efforts of Egerton Ryerson Superintendent of Schools for Canada West as Ontario was then known. They were based on similar practices that Ryerson had observed on an educational tour in 1845 during…

Twenty-two 5- and 6-year-old children and their parents in one playschool in Reykjavik participated in this study designed to shed light on children's and parents' views about their early childhood program. Group interviews, children's photographs, children's drawings, and a questionnaire administered as a game were used to elicit children's…

What kind of equality among Europeans does equal citizenship require, especially regarding education? In particular, is there good reason to insist of equality of education among Europeans--and if so, equality of what? To what extent should the same knowledge base and citizenship norms be taught across state borders and religious and other…

We developed an instrument for HIV/AIDS behavioral surveillance applicable to youth living in urban West Africa. The instrument includes a comprehensive set of constructs borrowed from the sociocognitive theory of planned behavior as well as measures of parental and peer communication An exploratory (n = 189) and validation sample (n = 342) of…

This article is based on the observations of an English teacher both in the USA and in the Middle East (where she was also learning Arabic as a second language). It points out a tendency of some language learners to view the speech and behaviour of native speakers as always appropriate, when not all native speakers speak and act in accordance with…

This article examines the sociocognitive processes contributing to intention to use contraception and willingness to engage in unsafe sex, using extended versions of the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the Prototype/Willingness model (Gibbons & Gerrard, 1995, 1997). Data were obtained from a questionnaire delivered to all the pupils in…

In this study a matched intervention-control site design in 14 urban health centers with random selection of 160 participants (80 in each of intervention and control) was used to evaluate a sex education program in Iran. Qualitative methods were used in a needs assessment that also set the content and method of delivery of the program. The…

The growth of surveillance in UK schools in recent years has resulted in the development of what can be labelled as the surveillance curriculum. Operating through the overt and hidden curricula, contemporary surveillance practices and technologies not only engage students in a discourse of control, but also increasingly socialise them into a…

This paper draws on Judith Butler's notion of "gender melancholia" as conceived in "The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection," and Emmanuel Levinas' notion of the face of the other mobilized in Butlers' more recent work. In particular, I will focus on gender melancholia in order to consider why non-heteronormative…

Argues that suicide is an idea, having much in common with societal beliefs/norms. Discusses evidence supportive of suicide as idea, based on knowledge from study of history and culture, and about contagion/cluster phenomena, media/communication, and choice of method. Suggests that certain individuals are more vulnerable to incorporate idea/act of…

The creation of an effective learning environment requires cultural competency--the ability to interact effectively with people of different cultures. Cultural competency means knowing and understanding the people that you serve. This study compares American and Chinese student's readiness and willingness to use innovative technology by assessing…